Tag Archives: Aria

Feature & Follow #98 – Dream Cast of Under the Never Sky

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Welcome to the Feature & Follow Hop, hosted by Parajunkee’s View and Alison Can Read!

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This week’s topic is simultaneously fun and super-hard. And here it is:

Activity: Dream cast your current read

Okay. I love playing this game in my head while I’m reading. I love movies, I love film adaptations of books, and I like to play the “what if” game with myself.

But good grief, the books I’m reading now do not make this easy.

First off, the one I’m reading now, I’m just not far enough into it to cast. I’m only about 1/5 of the way through The Knife of Never Letting Go, and I do not know enough about any of the characters to cast them. So I decided to move to the one I just finished, Under the Never Sky. And it is hard.

You’re going to need to forgive me now, because I am just not up on my teen/child actors and actresses. I tried to pick mostly from people I’d seen act in at least something (the glaring exception being Aria), but that means sometimes they’re a bit of a stretch. There’s probably some awesome actors/actresses out there that I’ve never heard of that could do a great job on these roles. And the two child parts – Cinder and Talon – would probably do better with unknown actors. But saying “unknown” is no fun! So here we go.

Aria: Emma Roberts

Photo Credit: http://worldhairstyles.com

Aria is 17, dark-haired, beautiful, and was genetically engineered to be an angelic operatic singer. I haven’t actually seen Emma Roberts in anything, but I’ve heard she’s good, and she looks like I picture Aria. The singing would have to be dubbed though. While Emma Roberts is a passable pop singer, you need to have some serious pipes and be classically trained to pull off Tosca.

Perry: Matt Lauria

Photo Credit: http://www.poptower.com

Perry is 18, blond-haired, muscular, and kind of scary. Let’s just ignore for a minute the fact that Matt’s actually nearly 28 years old. I looked him up thinking he couldn’t possibly be much past his early 20s. So apparently the boy (er, man) ages well. I really enjoyed him on his one season of Friday Night Lights, and while the rugged and savage character of Perry is extremely different from the squeaky-clean Luke Cafferty, I think he could pull it off.

Roar: Zac Efron

Photo Credit: http://www.details.com

PLEASE DON’T HATE ME. No seriously. Roar is described as being dark haired, with movie-star good looks, and is highly charismatic and charming.  So, High School Musical aside, I actually think Zac Efron is a pretty good fit.

Cinder: Joel Courtney

Photo Credit: Rob Sentz photostream at http://www.flickr.com/

Yup, that’s the kid from Super 8. Cinder is supposed to be 12 years old, skeletally thin (so Joel – or any kid cast to play him – would have to lose some weight), and carries around a wariness and sadness with him. I don’t really know of a lot of younger teen actors, but I thought the kids were the best part of Super 8 (the alien sure as heck wasn’t), and I think Joel would make a pretty decent Cinder.

Vale: Hayden Christensen

Photo Credit: http://img.getglue.com

Vale is the leader of the Tides, and Perry’s older brother. I’m pretty sure Hayden Christensen could be made to look related to Matt Lauria. Plus, Star Wars prequel suckage aside, he showed he could play both sympathetic and sinister. We’ll overlook the fact that he overacted a tad (okay, a lot) in Star Wars, because it’s been 7 years since then and I’m assuming he’s matured a bit as an actor.

Rose: Kristin Kreuk

Photo Credit: http://images.starpulse.com

Rose is described as striking, dark and long-limbed, with high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes. Now, “dark” could also mean African American, but the almond eyes say Asian to me. I’ve always thought Kristin Kreuk is beautiful and exotic, and I think she could do justice to Rose’s small part.

Marron: Paul Giamatti

Photo Credit: www1.hollywoodreporter.com

Marron is described as round-faced, blond-haired blue-eyed, short, and portly but graceful. Obviously I took some liberties with that, since I couldn’t for the life of me think of anyone who matched that description. Marron struck me as kind and gentle, but also quick-witted and intelligent. Paul Giamatti is an excellent actor, and I’m pretty sure he could handle everything the role requires.

Talon: Jared Gilmore

Photo Credit: http://www.aceshowbiz.com

Okay, I know, he’s 12 and not 7. But he’s small and has dark hair, like Talon. And honestly, I don’t know many (or any) 7-year-old child actors. I actually think he’s mostly not-annoying on Once Upon a Time, and I’m going to assume that a 7-year-old living in a tribe under the Aether would look older than most 7-year-olds in your average 2012 second grade classroom. So I think it works.

Lumina: Julia Roberts

Photo Credit: http://cdn.blogs.sheknows.com

She’s Emma Roberts’ aunt! And they look so much alike! I think that would be a fun cameo.

Consul Hess: Clancy Brown

Photo Credit: http://images.wikia.com/

He’s supposed to be centuries old, but the only place you can tell is his eyes…which means the makeup department would have their work cut out for them. But what you can’t accomplish with makeup is the sinister darkness that needs to be part of the villain of the story. And Clancy Brown can do sinister darkness.

Phew. So those are all the major roles in Under the Never Sky. And that was ridiculously hard. I’m glad I’m not a casting director.

Review: Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi (@V_Rossibooks @harperteen)

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I’ve been pretty psyched to read Under the Never Sky since I saw the cover several months ago. I mean, that is a pretty sweet cover, right? Plus, it’s a sci-fi dystopian, which is a mash-up of two of my favorite genres (and if you read my spotlight over on Michelle Muto‘s blog, you know I like genre mash-ups. Oh also, I was spotlighted on Michelle Muto’s blog! How cool is that?) So what better book to kick off my two-week dystopiaganza?

Dystopiarama? Dystopiapalooza? Hm. I may have to work on that.

The Plot

Aria has lived all her life in the pod of Reverie among the Dwellers, safe from the Aether storms and deadly toxins in the Earth’s atmosphere. In Reverie, every entertainment, risk, and sensation takes place in the virtual Realms, an experience that proclaims itself “Better than Real.”

However, when Aria takes part in what is supposed to be harmless mischief, outside the safety of the Realms, everything goes wrong, and her night of fun ends in catastrophe. Lives are lost, lies are told, and before Aria knows what is going on, she finds herself exiled to the world outside the pods. The Death Shop.

Perry has lived his life in the shadow of his brother, Blood Lord of one of the many tribes that inhabits the treacherous lands outside the pods. He is a Scire, gifted with extraordinarily heightened senses of smell and sight, and feels that his tribe will suffer under his brother’s leadership. The only thing that has kept him from challenging his brother for the leadership role is his love for his brother’s small son, Talon.

But when Talon is kidnapped by Dwellers, Perry takes the blame and is forced to abandon his tribe.

Soon, Perry and Aria find themselves thrown together, forced to form a grudging alliance, each of them possessing something the other desperately needs. But their personal differences, the search for Talon, and the proof of Aria’s innocence is overshadowed by their continuous fight to simply survive.

My Thoughts

First of all, I had a really hard time just writing the summary of the plot. This world is complex, and although I love the thought that went into it and all its intricacies, I found the story initially kind of hard to settle into. There’s a lot that happens very early on in the story, and I had to struggle to get my bearings. But once I got my feet under me (about halfway through my lovely synopsis up above), I really enjoyed the story.

I think this book is actually only loosely a dystopian. It’s really much more sci-fi, with a few dystopian elements thrown in almost as an afterthought. Truthfully, if not for random mentions of pieces of Earth’s history (a Matisse painting, a National Geographic magazine) sprinkled in sporadically, this entire story could easily have taken place on an alien planet. The atmospheric conditions are so different from what we currently know, and humans have changed so much, that the setting isn’t really recognizable as Earth. However, the back story of how the Earth came to be this way is never explained (there are some vague mentions of what happened before and after “Unity,” but the book never explain what this was), so maybe if it is revealed in the sequel(s), it will all make more sense.

I enjoyed Aria’s character. She wasn’t a meek and klutzy damsel in distress like so many YA heroines. (She was, of course, freakishly beautiful, BUT that is explained as a product of genetic engineering, and therefore forgivable. In Aria’s words, in Reverie, “everyone looks like this.” Ooh, deja vu!) She had her moments of forehead-slapping idiocy, but she also learned and grew, realized when her stubbornness was stupid, and was someone I could root for.

I liked Perry even more, although at the beginning I kind of wanted to punch him, what with all the “my brother’s in charge but it really should be me” nonsense. Okay, fine, it should be you, but stop acting like your only two choices are killing your brother or exile. There’s such a thing as humility, dude.

But again, that was just in the beginning. Once he was out on his own and with Aria, I liked him much more. And like Aria, he also grew, which I appreciated. Too often, the worldly male character in a book serves only as a teacher for the naive female character. But while Perry did teach Aria a number of things (including how to not pick poison berries, a lesson Peeta could have used), he also learns a great deal himself.

I enjoyed the pacing and the development of the plot, and the writing was absorbing, once I got used to it. I loved that the romance in the book developed slowly and naturally. The only complaint I had was that I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the ending. A lot of questions go unanswered. Since this is book one of a trilogy, I’ll forgive it. But I was hoping at least a little more would be wrapped up in the first book.

Overall, I thought this was an intriguing story with engaging characters, and I’m excited to see what happens next.

Content guide: Contains violence, references to cannibalism, and brief sexual situations.